The popular multi-protocol client, Pidgin, got an interesting update yesterday. Some new features, some new fixes, and here, one of the best multi-protocol chat client got even better.

The spotlight in this releases falls on the new voice and video support for XMPP networks, that Google’s GTalk IM works on. Other important features to look for are theme support and p2p file transfer for the Yahoo Messenger network.

Feature List in Brief [Full Changelog ^[1]]:

• Voice & Video support, voice support with GTalk and voice and video support with the GMail web client.
• Theme support in libpurple.
• Support for receiving handwritten (ink) messages on MSN
• Support for receiving audio clips on MSN.
• Show when the user was last logged in when doing "Get Info" on an offline buddy, provided the server supports it.
• New XMPP and Google Talk accounts require SSL by default.
• P2P file transfers in Yahoo Messenger.
• Sending text messages (address to +<countrycode><phone number>) from Yahoo Messenger.

Now here’s the raw deal. Pidgin released 2.6.0 yesterday and just after a few hours, also released 2.6.1 to fix some bugs. But neither of the new versions are available to download from the Pidgin Download page. The Window version that is available is still lingering on 2.5.8 and Ubuntu repositories and PPA haven’t yet been updated with the new version.

So, Windows users will have to wait while they update their site with the 2.6.1 version, but Ubuntu users should rejoice, as the latest version of Pidgin, i.e. 2.6.1 can be grabbed from GetDeb. So if you use Ubuntu, get yourself the .deb ^[2] file and enjoy.

There’s still one glitch though. The WebUpd8 blog points out ^[3]:

The biggest setback this far is that these features [voice and video] are not supported on Windows - but the Pidgin devs are working on it! And it also appears that the package from GetDeb does not provide voice/video support because Jaunty does not have the required library versions, so you probably must wait until Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala.

Disappointment! Anyhow, if you just want to try out the other features in this release, either wait for the Windows version ^[4], or get the deb file as linked above.